Welcome to Fiction Forge Indy! We are a group of four writers in Indianapolis that love to talk about anything that has to do with writing. We all met at the Indiana Writers Center and come from four very different backgrounds with interests in Fantasy, Mystery, Humor, Romance, and Historical Fiction. Prepare to be informed and entertained! Oh --and by the way, we hope you share your thoughts on the craft of writing, too.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Interstate Reject?

I'd like to give Forge Followers an update on my first Press-publishing journey that began earlier this summer and has populated some of my posts (see: Keys to the West and Interstate Standstill). Just a quick refresher, I was approached by a new publishing company to write a fictional story on sexual relations, or the lack thereof, from a gay man's perspective. The story should reveal particular self-centered disadvantages, of sorts (pathos), must be humorous, and should be sexual -- but not graphic.

Have I met the requirements? We shall see.

Tentatively titled Interstate Pan (referring to the original Greek God who holds special meaning to the main character), the story centers around an odd character who actually sprang forth from the left eye of Scandinavian Goddess, Heather McGrail. Even the setting and parts of the premise came from a conversation she and I had sometime in the summer that was, well... I was both amazed and red-faced at what she suggested. Gurl? Really?!

I am proud to say that I fully adopted who I now call Joshua, and that I have finished the first draft of Joshua's story regarding a particularly bizarre meeting with a man named Trucker Dee. Joshua is a prostitute who started out life studying Greek classics but ended up tricking a lonely stretch of highway across Missouri, with no other interests in life but to breathe and exhale while the world literally changes around him. For his part, Trucker Dee has accepted the changing world and has modified the role that he plays as one who picks up prostitutes such as Joshua. How do the two of them make things happen on their way to Springfield, Missouri?

Just this week, I sent the story on to the publishing company for review and, hopefully, an opportunity to revise Josh and Trucker Dee's journey and then released to the world. Realizing that any word and sentence submitted are up for modification, I cautiously give you the byline -- and nothing more:

Joshua is an aging Lot Lizard working the I-44 circuit in Missouri who is coping with a rapidly changing, digitized, dating app flooded, and millennial controlled world of sex that is effectively stealing the fruits of his labor. While society has grown up and even transformed, Joshua has remained woefully stuck in his own, self-imposed world of limp.
If and when the story is published, I'll post the link to the actual book on Amazon along with my final thoughts on the whole process. I can then reveal a bit more on the story and why I hold it closer to my heart than what I have yet revealed.

IF...If...If...If...

Ah, yes: IF Interstate Pan gets published. What IF Interstate Pan doesn't fly? (Cute, huh?) What IF the publishers want something totally different? More humorous? Less commentary? Less fictionalized? Less GAY?

I know in my head that honest to goodness business reasons exist that might lead to my story's REJECTION: the readership's tastes, the overall mood of the theme, the story's structure, scenes so disturbing that they could encourage a coup of Cheetos proportion. Yet, how could I deal with that terrible, capitalized word, REJECTION?

Maybe just a day spent wallowing in pity will do the trick. Or, a protracted, weeks long tongue-swearing Earl Grey tea binge. I just don't know since I haven't experienced rejection before. Well, regarding publishing material, that is. Ha!

Rejection is part of the writer's journey, right? Yeah...What I DO know is that I like what I wrote, and I am fully open to the possibility that my story may not fit a publishing entity's theme or audience. In the very least, I already knew before I sent in the first draft that Joshua's story needed reworking. Every author needs to revise their work. Period. And so it goes...into the hands of others.

Watch this spot.

"Literature should not disappear up its own ass----, so to speak." Kurt Vonnegut

Fiction Forge Indy

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Contributors

Heather McGrail

Heather

Heather spent much of her life in school, teaching, and traveling--generally investing lots of experiences about which to write. Now, she is settled into the quiet, Midwest with a boring office job to write about her experiences. Too bad her current experiences are great writing material, too!

Heather has been active in this blog and the Indiana Writers' Center for many years. Yeah for great writers and great support for writers in the community!

Mike Moir

Mike

Hi. My name is Michael Moir and I'm a writer.

I don't know when I became addicted to the printed word, but over time I have found that I can't put it away from me. My therapist says it has to do with the little yellow books that were forced upon me in Kindergarten (See Spot Run...Run, Spot, Run! RUN!!!), but in the depth of my soul, I know it is deeper than that. I was born with this in my very DNA. Phrasing, grammar, and plot structure are as sure in my being as cytosine is to guanine. It is a dark and wildly fantastic creature that gires and gimbles in the shadowed places of my soul. I have been told that I must find a way to purge the wordful animal within (my therapist recommended me to a witch doctor in the Andes), but I have decided to learn to live with it. This desire, this compulsion, this demon that is writing is me and I am it.

I call him Steve.

Randall Scott Wireman

Randy

Hi! I am Randy. I'm pretty sure that I started writing when I held my first crayola. Unfortunately, I grabbed the white one which left little proof of my brilliant earlier works! I write fiction that's often centered on gay characters - but sometimes off-centered gay characters, too -Ha! Because of the poor recording or admittance of such affairs due to prevailing political and religious views, such historical possibilities of gay relations are difficult to accept, let alone imagine. But, of course gay relations occurred, and much more often than the historical records dictate. I like to give honor to my gay brothers and sisters of our hushed past by conjuring such situation backdrops of history and breathing life into what I cannot know really occurred, but what I feel is closer to reality than it is to fiction.

Nick Dyakanoff

Nick

Nick Dyakanoff recently started writing and exploring the world of workshops and blogs with our strange group. He tells lots of amazing stories from growing up in Alaska, working on different ships, exploring the music industry, and settling into Midwestern life.

Writing has become a new way to share these stories. He looks forward to sharing more of his stories on this blog.